Flowers and a frog

In the last three weeks we've accomplished 14 things on our summer bucket list as well as partially completed a few others. One item on our list was to plant flowers, which is something I hadn't done since 2016. Nadia and Oliver chose which flowers they wanted me to buy yesterday afternoon, and we planted them this afternoon. I mowed the lawn, used the weed whacker, did some weeding of the flower beds, and started trimming some of the bushes. It was a very hot day today for our state so I decided to finish trimming the bushes tomorrow morning. While I was outside, Oliver found a frog (or maybe it was a toad?) that he caught and released several times. He also wants to plant a seed for a tree and grow a tree. Of my three kids he's consistently been the one most interested in nature. 

I saw today that WVIA posted that they will be having a day at Montage Mountain waterpark next month, which was another encouraging sign of life moving closer back to normal. I also noticed that a couple of the National Parks we are hoping to visit in September have very recently reopened or have announced when they will be reopening. I hope that trend continues! Today I booked our reservations for Darien Lake next weekend. I should have done it earlier as some of the time slots were already filled. I also purchased timed tickets for the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural site and the Buffalo Naval Park for next Friday. 

I'd assume that it would seem like I would have a lot more free time now that we're taking a break from homeschooling, but I never lack for things to do! In addition to mowing and other yard work that I did today I also made a cheese soufflé, ordered some clothes online once I realized Nadia outgrew her bathing suits from last year and needs one next week, requested an audiobook by ILL, did a load of dishes, removed all long sleeve shirts from the boys' dressers and finished moving their summer clothes and bathing suits into their dressers, worked on some vacation plans, practiced the piano with Ian and the trio with the kids, completed a couple of lessons on Duolingo as I'm trying to strengthen my knowledge of Spanish, and the list goes on. I enjoyed listening to A Girl of the Limberlost while I was mowing and weed whacking. Yesterday I got the annual homeschooling affidavit notarized. Tomorrow I'm hoping to write up objectives for each of the kids for next school year which needs to go with the affidavit and their homeschool evaluations for this school year.  

Catching insects